


Liza Tested

by toushindai (WallofIllusion)



Category: Baccano!
Genre: Child Abuse, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Hive Mind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-18
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-07-15 19:27:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7235533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WallofIllusion/pseuds/toushindai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham! Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Liza Tested

**Author's Note:**

> Presenting: the most fucked-up thing I've ever written! Huey is a very bad dad.

It was early morning. Having finished his morning coffee, Huey called for his second daughter.

“Liza?”

“Yes, Daddy?”

She had been polishing some of her chakrams in the living room, but at her father’s voice, she immediately put them aside and came into the kitchen. Her eyes were dutiful and eager to please. Huey smiled his gentle smile back at her.

“Can you bring another one of your vessels here? I have a task for you.”

Puzzlement crossed the girl’s face. “Eh? Is it something I can’t do? If it’s something I’m too young for, I can have another me do it, you can just tell me and I’ll do it! There’s no need to waste time—”

“Liza,” Huey interrupted her serenely. “I have my reasons. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, Daddy.” The girl hung her head sheepishly. “Are you angry at me?”

Huey’s gentle smile never wavered. “Ahaha. I’m not angry, Liza. I know that you love to be of use to me. But for what I want, I need both this body of yours and another one to be present.”

At that, Liza perked up again. “So I can help out?”

“Oh, yes. You are crucial to what I have in mind.”

“Hooray!” Liza clapped her hands together. “I’ll come over right away, I’m hailing a cab right now. I should be there in ten minutes!”

“Perfect. Thank you, Liza. Have you had breakfast?”

“Not yet!”

“I’ll make you some toast.”

Liza sat down at the table and watched her father toast the bread, swinging her legs back and forth cheerfully. In the privacy of his head, behind an unflagging smile, Huey considered his daughter’s loyalty to him. No, devotion was the better word for it; unlike Chane, who regarded herself as a mere tool in her father’s hands, Liza craved his affection and approval. She was his daughter and his homunculus in equal measure. In most cases, the distinction was meaningless, but he had been unsurprised by her moment of protest when she thought that Huey was favoring another one of Hilton’s vessels over the one she treasured for its blood connection to him. And so he couldn’t help but be curious what would happen if she were forced to choose between treasuring her connection to him and obeying his orders.

He buttered the toast for her, and she accepted it with a smile. She had no idea what Huey intended to ask of her.

Just as Liza finished off her toast, the doorbell rang. “I’ll get it!” she offered, and bounced out of her seat to let herself in. Huey stood as well, closing the kitchen curtains and pulling a paring knife out of the knife block. He tested it against his finger; it broke skin easily. The cut closed just as the two Hiltons entered the kitchen.

The other Hilton was a middle-aged Asian woman wearing a cook’s uniform; she had probably come here from her job. She stood with a military posture that had most likely come from some other vessel’s knowledge. Liza held herself in the same way, but her eagerness still shone through on her face. It was she who spoke—unsurprisingly.

“What do you need, Daddy?”

Huey smiled graciously at the two women before raising one finger and pointing it at his daughter. Liza blushed at first, but all the color drained from her face when he spoke.

“I need you to eliminate this vessel.”

“?!”

A sound, more of a choked whimper than a word, emerged from both of the vessels at once. Fifty miles away, a new Sham was covertly watching another Hilton, and later he would report on whether Hilton had managed to restrict her response to these two alone. Huey suspected that she had not.

Tears formed in Liza’s eyes, and her lip trembled. She didn’t look away from Huey as she pointed at vessel beside her. “Y-You mean _I_ should kill _her_ , right?” she asked—pleaded—and the vessel nodded frantically. Huey tinged his smile with a regret that he didn’t feel at all.

“No, Liza,” he said gently. “I need you to eliminate your first vessel. You’re too attached to it.” He continued to point at his daughter’s body. The other vessel’s eyes were trained on his left hand, where he held the knife. Both of the females were shaking.

Liza shook her head again. “B-but—but that’s because I…! Daddy, I—I’m sorry, whatever I did wrong, I’m sorry, I’ll—I’ll stop acting like such a baby, I’ll be good! I’ll be good, Master Huey!”

“Sir, please.” The other vessel added her voice to the mix as Liza continued her meaningless apologies. Intriguingly, she sounded more composed than Liza, and the accent in her voice made it legitimately difficult to keep in mind that there was only one organism speaking to him. “Liza has the advantage over all my other vessels in that no one will question her constant presence by your side. It would be a waste to k-k—kill—”

Ah, and that was where the calm facade broke down. Now the frantic distress spread to her face, too, and her voice trembled. Her accent even slipped. Did Hilton constantly, consciously reproduce each of her vessels’ accents?

How fascinating. This was already a fruitful experiment.

Unfortunately for the young homunculus, it wasn’t concluded yet.

Huey stepped closer to the vessels and offered the knife to the older one. She shrank backwards. As if in contrast, Liza threw her arms around Huey’s waist.

“Daddy,” she whimpered, “Daddy, please, don’t make me. I don’t want to! This body is me! All the others, I’ll kill any of the others, I’ll kill all of the others if you want me to, just please let me keep this one!”

“Liza,” he said gently.

“Daddy, no, please. Please. I’ll kill them all. All my birds, all my bodies—”

“Liza,” he repeated. He stared into the other Hilton’s face. “Is that what I asked you for?”

A sob wrenched out of Liza’s throat and she only held Huey tighter. The other vessel watched, her eyes occasionally drifting from his face to the knife he held aloft.

“Sir,” she whispered. She, too, sounded on the verge of tears. “Do I have to?”

Huey shrugged calmly. “In the end, it is your decision, Hilton. But I need to know that I can trust you to follow my orders. Sham disposed of his first vessel with no prompting from me, and I thought I could trust you with a similar request.”

Liza wheezed into his shirt, trying to compose herself enough to speak again. She failed. The other vessel spoke. “You can trust me. I promise you can trust me, Da—Master Huey.”

He offered the knife once more. With dread on her face, the other Hilton took it; as she examined the blade, Liza sobbed into Huey’s shirt. His hand now free, Huey stroked her hair, waiting for her to calm.

“I’ll do it,” she whispered finally. “I’ll do it if that’s what you want me to do, Daddy.”

He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and turned his gentle smile towards the other vessel. “Thank you, Hilton.”

As expected, she cringed at the name he chose to call her by. But then she raised her eyes, looking tearfully up into her father’s face. “I’ll do it, so can I have Chane? If you like her better, I can be her, I promise! I’ll be just like her, you’ll never know the difference!”

Huey shook his head. “This isn’t about whether I like Liza or Chane better, Hilton. You and Chane have different roles to play. There may come a time when you may take Chane, but I have no plans to allow that in the near future.”

“Nnngh…” Tears threatened to overcome her again, but she bit her lip hard enough to draw blood and pulled herself together. “Then m-maybe… you could do it? Instead of me? If you stabbed me, Daddy, I’d forgive you, I’d still—”

Another shake of his head. “That isn’t what I asked of you,” he reminded her. “I need you to do it, Hilton. Eliminate this vessel.”

She shuddered in his arms, and he saw the other vessel wince. But she didn’t protest further. Taking a deep breath, she looked over her shoulder at the other vessel and then back up at Huey.

“C-Can I look at you while it happens?” she asked in a trembling voice.

“Yes, you may.”

Tears began to flow from her eyes again. She scrubbed them away to clear her vision. “Thank you, Daddy.”

She straightened, and Huey took her shoulders in his hands. Squeezing gently, he said, “When you’re ready.”

A few feet away, the other vessel took a deep breath of her own and readied the knife. Huey watched her rather than his daughter, though he knew Liza desperately wanted him to meet her eyes. He didn’t grant her wish. The other vessel dashed forward, knife at the ready—

And in the last second, Huey threw his daughter out of the way.

It was too sudden for the other Hilton to stop; the knife slammed into his body right below his ribcage and he stumbled backwards a step. Despite expecting it, he grunted in pain and doubled over. Hilton dropped the knife with a gasp of horror.

“Daddyyy!”

Liza’s voice was a scream. Huey dropped to one knee, more for the dramatics of the thing than out of necessity, and pressed his hand against the temporary wound. Hilton hadn’t held back. This certainly would have ended Liza’s life.

By the time his blood began to seep back onto his body, Liza had her arms around him and was blubbering like a toddler.

“Daddy, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you! I couldn’t stop in time! Are you okay? Are you o—”

She stopped mid-word as Huey pulled her into a tight embrace. Then, continuing to sob, she hugged back. She was shaking.

“I’m fine, Liza,” Huey murmured. “Thank you. You did so well. I’m so proud of you.”

“Huh?” she asked through her tears.

“I told you, I needed to know that I could trust you to follow my orders. You’ve proven that you love me, because you would have killed your favorite vessel for me.” He stroked the back of her head. “I’m touched, and very grateful.”

Liza caught her breath, slowly understanding what her father was telling her. “Then… then I don’t have to die?”

“No. You may keep this vessel.”

At that announcement, Liza burst freshly into sobs and hugged Huey tighter. When she could speak again, she whispered a constant, “Thank you, Daddy, thank you! Thank you!!”

Huey dismissed the other Hilton with a gentle wave and then continued to hold his daughter. As she cried with gratitude and relief, Huey listened with half an ear, devoting most of his attention to his own thoughts.

_Does she realize how deeply I’ve just traumatized her?_

Liza’s joy was undeniable, but Huey knew it was symptomatic of how frightened and horrified she’d been by his demand. There was a possibility that, as something inhuman, she could bounce back from such trauma a little faster, but that certainly hadn’t been the case with the Lamia. And indeed, even as her tears began to subside, she continued to shiver. Huey guided her to the couch and wrapped her in a blanket. Taking care of her here would only cement her loyalty further.

_Not that it needs much further cementing_ , Huey thought with an empty smile. She had proven herself today, much as Chane had some years before. The one difference was that Chane’s act of sacrifice—of giving up her voice—had been a complete surprise to Huey, while he could have written out Liza’s whole tantrum and eventual compliance like a script. But there was nothing wrong with that; Chane was sometimes unpredictable and Liza always utterly predictable and both had their uses. It benefited him to have both at his disposal.

Her body tired from what it had been through, Liza began to drift off to sleep. Her hand curled around Huey’s fingers just as had when she was an infant. Huey hummed a soft lullaby, centuries old, and turned his thoughts towards planning his next experiment.


End file.
